The cost of translation

Bro McFerran, president of the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce,  delivered a wide-ranging speech last night at the organisation's annual banquet in Belfast City Hall.

He raised a number of issues about the economy and public expenditure and asked, 'Where is the cost benefit in Irish language and Ulster-Scots translations?  We're not anti-Irish or anti-Ulster-Scots - just anti-translation at great expense.'

I wonder how many people in Northern Ireland share his view, especially at a time when the cost of translations is increasing?  The increasing cost has been particularly evident in the case of Caitriona Ruane and the Department of Education, with endless unnecessary and unwanted translations into Irish.

A similar point was made in the Republic earlier this week by Michael Ring TD of Fine Gael who questioned the need for translating official government documents into Irish.  He said that 1.8m euro was spent last year translating English documents into Irish, which is the first official language in the Republic. 

The Official Languages Act, which provides a 'statutory framework for the delivery of services through the Irish language' was signed into Irish law in 2003 and in the six years since then central government and local authorities have spent 6m euro producing translated documents.  Michael Ring added that almost no one was buying them or using them and he asked if it was time for the act to be reviewed.

Of course Michael Ring is a TD for county Mayo, the birthplace of Caitriona Ruane, so clearly there is a difference of opinion in that county!

This is an issue to which I will return, in relation to both Irish and Ulster-Scots, but I simply want to note that it is an issue that is out now in the arena of public debate, north and south of the border.

Sean Scully

The latest Culture Northern Ireland Newsletter contains a review of the new Ulster Museum by John Gray.  I have reproduced below his assessment of the art section of the museum, which is devoted entirely to a retrospective exhibition of the work of the Irish-American artist Sean Scully and I wonder how many people share his view of the exhibition?

"What then of art? The flagship re-opening exhibition is Constantinople or the Sensual Concealed, a major retrospective by Sean Scully. As with much modern abstract art the appeal of this is decidedly obscure. In the context of the re-opening this suggests a new ambition; to place the Ulster Museum centre stage in the world of modern art. In the meantime the specifically local or Irish art actually in its collections seems to have disappeared, though a re-appearance beckons by March 2010. It seems a misplaced order of priorities."

UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is an international human rights treaty that grants all children and young people (aged 17 and under) a comprehensive set of rights and it was adopted by the United Nations on 20 November 1989.  As a result 20 November is known as Universal Children's Day.

The United Kingdom signed the Convention on 19 April 1990, ratified it on 16 December 1991 and it came into force in the UK on 15 January 1992. When a country ratifies the Convention it agrees to do everything it can to implement it.

The rights set out in the UNCRC include, among many others, certain cultural rights and these are related to the education system. They are to be found in articles 29, 30 and 31 which incorporate the following commitments:

Article 29

1. States Parties agree that the education of the child shall be directed to:

(c) The development of respect for the child’s parents, his or her own cultural identity, language and values, for the national values of the country in which the child is living, the country from which he or she may originate, and for civilizations different from his or her own.

Article 30

In those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities or persons of indigenous origin exist, a child belonging to such a minority or who is indigenous shall not be denied the right, in community with other members of his or her group, to enjoy his or her own culture, to profess and practise his or her own religion, or to use his or her own language.

Article 31

2. States Parties shall respect and promote the right of the child to participate fully in cultural and artistic life and shall encourage the provision of appropriate and equal opportunities for cultural, artistic, recreational and leisure activity.

Children have cultural rights and within our schools and youth provision they should be able to learn about the culture of their home and community.  This is something to which children are entitled and should be part of their cultural entitlement.  I believe that there is a differential in the implementation of this right across the school sectors, with a higher level of provision in many schools in the Roman Catholic and Irish medium sectors, where there is a strong emphasis on Irish culture, including Irish traditional music, Irish dancing, Irish games and the Irish language.

We are starting to see a change and I was delighted to see the introduction of tuition in the Lambeg drum and fife in the Boys Model School in Belfast but there is a need to monitor the implementation of this right and ensure that children in all sectors, including the controlled sector, learn about their own culture.

Who do you think you are?

This is the text of the article which I wrote for the Belfast Telegraph (13 November).

Simplistic labels ignore our multi-layered identities

Writing in the Belfast Telegraph, Ed Curran referred to the importance of culture, heritage and identity in Northern Ireland. He said, ‘In reality politics today is about our heritage, and principally about our British/Protestant and Irish/Catholic traditions.’

That is a very simplistic approach to identity and one that ignores the complexity of identity in the modern world. The fact is that identity is multi-layered and each of us has more than one identity.

Sometimes I have been told by Irish nationalists that unionists have an identity crisis and that we are not sure what we are. ‘Are you British or are you an Ulsterman? Are you a Protestant or are you a unionist? What are you? Can you not make up your mind?’

The truth is that I am all of these and more, because all of these are aspects or layers of my identity.

My national identity is British because I am a citizen of the United Kingdom.

However I also have a regional identity in that I live in Northern Ireland and describe myself as an Ulsterman. I am therefore both British and an Ulsterman, in the same way as someone can be British and a Scotsman, a Welshman or an Englishman.

But there is more to it than that. I also have a cultural or ethnic identity and my cultural identity is that of an Ulster-Scot. Others may have a different cultural identity in that they may be Irish or Anglo-Irish or whatever.

Most of us will also have a religious identity, which in my case is that of an evangelical Protestant. However that does not mean that all Protestants are Ulster-Scots. Someone else may be a Protestant and have an Irish cultural identity.

Moreover I have a political identity and I am a unionist. However that does not mean that all Protestants are unionists or that all Roman Catholics are nationalists. There are some Protestants who are nationalists just as there are many Roman Catholics who wish Northern Ireland to remain within the United Kingdom. Such is the complexity of identity.

But one layer of identity in particular has come to the fore and that is cultural identity. For too long the cultural establishment has been dominated by those who hold to an outdated analysis of two cultural identities in Northern Ireland – simply British and Irish. That is actually a flawed analysis and one that fails to grasp the cultural reality and the cultural diversity in Ulster.

At the bottom of the hill in Downpatrick, below the Church of Ireland Cathedral, there are three streets that meet at the traffic lights – they are English Street, Irish Street and Scotch Street, and that is a reflection of the three traditions that have helped to shape modern Ulster. However the Scottish influence in Ulster has often been ignored.

Twenty years ago the BBC published a book entitled The People of Ireland, which contained a chapter on the Scots by Professor Finlay Holmes. In it he said that, ‘History and geography have combined to make Ulster as much a Scottish as an Irish province.’ It was true then and it is still true today.

Only when we appreciate this diversity can we understand the complexity of Ulster history. Why is it that in 1798 many Presbyterians in Antrim joined the United Irishmen, while in Armagh they joined the Orange Order? Why is it that within a few years of 1798 most of the United Irishmen had become unionists? Why is it that a century later the vast majority of Presbyterian Liberals joined with Conservatives to become Ulster Unionists?

These complexities and seeming contradictions can only be understood when we appreciate our cultural diversity.

Ed Curran is right to highlight the importance of identity and I believe that the cultural establishment in Ulster – our schools, our universities, our academics and our museums – have a responsibility to help us understand both our complexity and our diversity.

Price and Adams

The arrest of Marian Price in connection with the Real IRA murder of two soldiers in Antrim in March has prompted a number of newspapers to carry fairly lengthy articles about Price.

Today The Independent recalled her republican family background and the role that Marian and her older sister Dolours played in the IRA bombing campaign in England.  The newspaper also recalled some comments that she made about Gerry Adams.  It reported that:  One interviewer described Ms Price as 'spitting scorn' when she spoke of Mr Adams.  According to Ms Price: 'Adams says he was never in the IRA.  That is total hypocrisy.  Gerry Adams and I were once friends.  We certainly aren't now.  He may have difficulty admitting his IRA past but I'm very, very proud of mine.

Of course Marian Price is not the only member of her family to state that Adams was a member of the IRA.  On 16 March 2001 the Daily Telegraph carried a report, based on an article in the Irish Echo, about a statement by Dolours Price.  She was at a republican ceremony in Ballina, county Mayo, in February 2001, to mark the 25th anniversary of the death of IRA hunger striker Frank Stagg. 

The Irish Echo said, 'Price had asked to speak because, she siad, like Stagg, both she and her sister had endured a hunger strike in 1973 and 1974.  Witnesses say she discarded her script and said she would 'speak from the heart'.

She then attacked high-ranking members of Sinn Fein who now dissociate themselves from the IRA. According to Ruairi O Bradaigh, the president of Republican Sinn Fein, who attended the event, she said that it was 'too much' to listen to people now saying they weren't in the IRA. Ms Price said: 'Gerry Adams was my commanding officer.'

Both Marian Price and her sister Dolours Price have stated categorically that Gerry Adams was a member of the Provisional IRA and the arrest of one of the sisters has drawn attention back to their statements.

I find this interesting because I was suspended from the Assembly on two occasions for speaking about Gerry Adams and the IRA.  We can all remember Adams statement about the IRA, 'they haven't gone away' and it seems that the same words can be applied to the words of Marian Price and other former members of the IRA.

Gerry Adams continued denials that he was ever a member of IRA carry no credibility at all and the longer they continue the more ludicrous he becomes.  Adams seems incapable of facing up to his past but the facts 'haven't gone away'.

Not only did Dolours Price state that Adams was a member of the IRA, at the time when she set off on her bombing campaign in March 1973.  She stated that he was actually her commanding officer, a senior figure in the IRA in the Belfast.  We then have to ask the question, 'If he was an IRA commander in Belfast in March 1973, what was he in July 1972 when the IRA murdered nine people and injured 130 on Bloody Friday?'

The Fighting Temeraire

In 2005 the BBC Today radio programme ran a poll to find Britain's favourite painting and more than a quarter of the votes went to JMW Turner's The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up.  He painted it in 1838 and today it hangs in the National Gallery in London.   The Fighting Temeraire received 31,892 votes out of the 118,111 votes cast and it was the painting that emerged as Britain's favourite. 

The Temeraire was built in the 1790s and fought at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.  It suffered considerable damage at Trafalgar but continued in service and then after some years as a prison ship and supplies depot it ended up in the Chatham Dockyard.  The painting depicts the ship being towed by a paddle steamer to its final berth to be broken up and it is a beautiful painting with a magnificent sunset, the ghostly relic of the Temeraire and the blackened tugboat in front of it.

The popularity of the painting is reflected in the recent publication of a new book, The Fighting Temeraire, by Dr Sam Willis, a maritime historian and archaeologist.  Reading a review of the book I was reminded that when I was 11 years old my parents bought me the Children's Britannica, a children's encyclopaedia with 12 volumes.  I was captivated by the information and also by the illustrations, which included a number of full colour reproductions of famous paintings.  One of them was The Fighting Temeraire and it was my favourite, all those years ago.  That was my introduction to art and an appreciation of art.

We must do all we can to ensure that young people growing up today have an opportunity, at an early age, to see beautiful art and we must do all we can to encourage an appreciation of art.

Voluntary Arts Ireland

Today I had a meeting with Brenda Kent and Pauline Matthew from Voluntary Arts Ireland and received an update on some of their initiatives as well as hearing about the concerns of the voluntary arts sector. 

Laura O'Hare and Nelson McCausland

It was particularly encouraging to hear about their efforts to engage young people in setting up and running arts events for themselves and their peers.  Pauline is the project coordinator for the Larne Young Arts Cooperative and Laura O'Hare, who is one of the participants in the project, told me about how the young people in the cooperative had benefited from the project.

VAI, which is part of the Voluntary Arts Network, seeks to promote a passion for participation in art, to lobby and advocate on behalf of the sector, and to provide support for voluntary arts groups.  This is a large and important arts sector and yet it is one that is sometimes overlooked.

Brenda has been the chief officer of the VAI for a number of years and has provided valuable service but she is now leaving and moving on to another post dealing with arts and disability.  I wish her well in her new role.